Roxy's Baby

by Cathy MacPhail

  The idea made her shiver. This operation was perhaps even bigger than she could ever imagine.

  Mr Dyce lifted the empty vegetable box from the table. He tapped her hand. ‘They might not be able to speak English, Roxy, but just remember, a smile is worth a thousand words and it only ever says one thing: I’m a friend.’

  Roxy smiled back at him. That’s what you think, Mr Dyce, she thought. This smile is saying, I don’t believe anything you say.

  The house was buzzing with activity. More beds crushed into more rooms, Mrs Dyce dashing about barking orders. There was hardly a moment to ask if she’d done anything about getting Roxy home. Roxy finally found the chance to speak to her as she was carrying sheets towards Roxy’s room. Two new beds had been put there already. All change, thought Roxy. She was glad she was going. The idyllic picture of the house when she arrived, like a girls’ summer boarding school, with midnight feasts in the dorm, was changing before her eyes. Now it was becoming a dark place, sinister and forbidding.

  ‘Roxy, my dear. These are your new room-mates.’ She introduced the three girls, dark-skinned, who looked frightened and wary of both Roxy and Mrs Dyce. Roxy took no notice of their names, she’d never remember them, and anyway she would be gone before it mattered. She wished she could tell them that she was going to help them, but all she managed was a smile.

  ‘Have you thought any more about me going home, Mrs Dyce?’

  Mrs Dyce was putting fresh sheets on one of the new beds. For the first time she noticed (why had she never noticed it before?) that the sheets were worn and torn. Old sheets. And why is there never anyone to help her? Roxy asked herself, knowing Anne Marie would provide her with one of her logical answers. ‘The fewer people who know about this the better, Roxy. The safer it is for us …’

  And the safer for the Organisation. She had already begun to think of it like that. The Organisation.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Roxy. I’ve been so busy today. But I promise tomorrow you will be my priority.’

  I could phone home, Roxy wanted to say, phone Mum, tell her to meet me somewhere. In London perhaps. But she said nothing, and kept that smile fixed on her face. She began to help Mrs Dyce make the bed.

  ‘No, no, Roxy. I’ll get this. Why don’t you change your own sheets?’

  When Roxy came back into the room carrying the fresh sheets, Mrs Dyce had gone. So had the new girls. The room was empty, and the hot afternoon had grown even hotter. The window was open and somewhere outside birds were calling to each other. It could have been an idyllic picture of a perfect summer day. Roxy was glad she was alone. She wanted to think and all she could think of was home. She had never wanted to see her mother as much as she did now. She wanted to talk to her, confide in her. Her mother would know how to get Aidan back for Anne Marie.

  Anne Marie. The thought of her made Roxy’s eyes well up with tears. How must she be feeling, believing her baby to be dead? She tugged the bottom sheet off the bed and saw something sticking out from under the mattress.

  The newspaper. She’d forgotten all about that paper, stolen, so long ago it seemed, from the front seat of James Bond’s car. She remembered with a smile how she and Anne Marie had lain across the bed and read all the showbiz gossip.

  In fact, the showbiz gossip was all they had read about. Roxy sat down on the bed and puffed a couple of pillows behind her head. There was a warm breeze drifting in through the window, but not enough to cool her down. She fanned herself with the paper for a moment, before opening it up and beginning to read.

  There was that train crash again. Some politician had run off with a pop star. The plane that had been hijacked. So long ago, it seemed.

  Had the politician returned by now? Was his wife standing by him? They usually did. Were they still negotiating the freedom for the hostages on the plane? Had it all been resolved peacefully? She was suddenly desperate to know all that was going on in the outside world. She decided then never to be cut off from everything like this again.

  She began to scan the columns, reading all the other stories hungrily. The woman who had sailed the Atlantic single-handedly for charity. The fires that were springing up all over the country straining the fire service to breaking point. A family whose home had been built over an old mineshaft and one day it had simply sunk underground. In the photo they were all smiling, as if it was a wonderful joke.

  The girl’s body that had been found, and was unidentified. She hadn’t read that story either. It had made her think of her mother, being asked to identify that body in case it was her own daughter, Roxy. How cruel would that have been? But she read the story now. Remembering how she had also heard the same story on the car radio that day.

  The girl’s body, a foreign girl, probably mid-European, had been found floating in the Thames. Not a suicide. A murder. She had died with a stab wound to the heart. And the girl had just had a baby. There was no clue to her identity, except for one thing. A tattoo. A tattoo of a cobra wound around her upper arm.

  In spite of the heat, Roxy’s whole body was suddenly bathed in ice-cold sweat. She felt as if she was drowning in ice. Her head began to swim and she was terrified she was about to pass out.

  A cobra wound around her upper arm.

  Roxy had seen a tattoo just like that before.

  On Sula’s arm.

  The body was Sula’s.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Roxy felt as if she was going to faint. Black spots swam in front of her eyes. Her throat was dry as dust.

  The body was Sula’s.

  No. It couldn’t be. Sula had gone home to have her baby.

  She read the story again, just to be sure. The unidentified woman had just had a baby.

  Had they kept her alive just long enough to have the baby, so it could still be sold for adoption? And then when Sula was no longer necessary, no longer ‘economically viable’, had they killed her?

  A stab wound through the heart.

  Roxy had to get some cool air, splash ice-cold water on her face. She needed something to cool her down. But when she stood up her legs wouldn’t hold her. They buckled under her and she collapsed on to the bed again.

  The body was Sula’s.

  It had to be. A young foreign woman who’d just had a baby. A girl with a tattoo on her arm. The tattoo of a cobra.

  And a stab wound through the heart. That was the picture she couldn’t keep from her mind, that horror image of Sula lying dead … a stab wound through the heart.

  Who would have done it? Mrs Dyce? She didn’t look like a murderess. Efficient, businesslike and sometimes so gentle. She would have to be heartless to kill Sula.

  But she was heartless, Roxy reminded herself. Hadn’t she taken Anne Marie’s baby away from her? Told her he was dead? You couldn’t get more heartless than that.

  But murder?

  Or could it have been Mr Dyce? No. Not with those soft eyes and that soothing voice of his. Not Santa Claus.

  But she’d heard of Nazi doctors in the concentration camps who had seemed on the outside equally gentle and yet they had lured their victims, gullible, innocent victims, inside the gas chambers pretending they were only going for a shower.

  Just as all the girls had been lured here, assured it was a place of safety.

  Or could it have been Stevens? Yes. Him she could imagine plunging a knife into a young girl’s heart.

  Poor Sula. She had thought she was going home.

  Roxy lay back on the bed, still bathed in sweat, and closed her eyes.

  She knew now they had no intention of letting her go home. She knew too much. Just as Sula had known too much. Her fate was to be the same as Sula’s. They would take her baby and then … She let out a cry. Couldn’t bear to think of it. This baby inside her had no protection except for Roxy. She couldn’t let him down.

  She swung her legs on to the floor. Sat up. NO! She would not allow it. She cupped her hands around her belly and whispered softly, ‘They won’t take you away from me, I promise.
And they won’t kill your mum either.’

  She would get away from here, some way. She would escape. She would tell the world. Tell them of the evil that was being committed here in Dragon House.

  In her mind suddenly, as clear as the sharpest photograph, she saw the gate lying open. The gate she had found that day long ago. The gate that led to freedom. She had once walked through that gate unchecked. She would do it again. Today. There was no time to waste.

  She was still wobbly when she stood up. One of the new girls came into the room just then, and ran to steady her. A smile is worth a thousand words. So Roxy smiled at her. The girl was Asian, maybe Turkish, she couldn’t tell, but she smiled back at Roxy and Roxy had a sudden urge to grab the girl, run with her, save her and her baby. But that would be stupid. The girl would panic, not understand what she was trying to do. She would alert the Dyces … and what would happen to Roxy then?

  A stab wound through the heart.

  She pushed the nightmare vision of herself, lying dead, right out of her mind.

  She still smiled at the girl. Her legs felt steadier now. They would have to be. This was no time to be weak. Roxy would save this girl, save them all. She had never felt more determined in all her life.

  She could take nothing with her. Not a scrap of clothing. Nothing. She would have to walk out of Dragon House, calmly, exactly as she was. She smiled once more at the girl to reassure her she was all right now, and then she walked out of the room, and down the stairs. If anyone asked, she was going for an afternoon stroll. She passed the kitchen where Mrs Dyce was showing one of the new girls how the cooker worked. She didn’t even look up. Mr Dyce was nowhere to be seen, probably shut up in the office working out just how ‘economically viable’ the new batch of girls would be.

  Roxy tried to seem calm and nonchalant as she strolled out into the garden. She tried to stop her legs from shaking, wishing the sweat would stop pouring from her. It wasn’t just the oppressive heat. It was fear. Fear they would catch her and stop her.

  Only once did she look back. She turned as casually as she could, as if she wanted to see the house from a distance, shading her eyes with her hand. Dragon House shimmered in the late afternoon sun, almost as if it was alive, another player in this nightmare story.

  Then she turned back and kept on walking, walking towards the gate, hoping that she would find it again, praying it wouldn’t now be locked and chained and welded shut.

  And if it was? Then she would climb, she decided. Nothing would stop her getting out of here. She’d always been a good climber. A tomboy, her dad would tell everyone. She wouldn’t let her bump stop her now. No. Not her bump … her baby. She whispered to him gently, ‘You’ll be a good climber too. I’ll show you how.’

  At least she wasn’t alone. That was what kept her going. Her baby was with her, safe inside her, relying on her.

  She wouldn’t let him down.

  She stopped for a moment, leaning against a tree to get her breath back. Had it ever been so hot? This had to be the hottest, driest summer she could ever remember.

  But she didn’t dare stop for long. Soon, they would realise she’d gone and they would begin searching for her. She had to be far away by then, through the gate, out into the countryside. Freedom.

  The gate couldn’t be so far now. She would surely have remembered walking this far. Had she come the wrong way? She pushed the long grass aside to make sure she was still following the worn path.

  Suddenly, she saw it, and she began to walk faster.

  But something was different, and her heart fell when she saw what it was. The gate was locked!

  She ran the last few yards crying, and gripped the iron bars with both hands. She almost expected those dragon tails to curl around her fingers, hold her trapped there.

  ‘NO!’ she yelled, shaking the bars in frustration. If she only had the strength to bend them, pull them apart, pull the gate off its hinges, break the iron chains.

  She laid her head against the gate and cried softly, ‘No.’

  ‘Trying to get out, are you?’

  This time she screamed and turned, flattening herself against the railings.

  It was Stevens, looking dirtier and darker than ever, looming towards her. His black hair was wild and his eyes were hooded and menacing.

  She drew in her breath, tried to think of a lie. ‘No. Honest.’ Her voice cracked with fear. ‘I only came out for a stroll.’

  ‘I told them you were too curious.’ He was shaking his head, scratching his chin with his maggoty fat fingers.

  ‘No. I’m going home soon. The Dyces are getting me home.’ She said it quickly, breathlessly. ‘I just wanted a last look round.’

  He stared at her for an age. ‘You’re going home?’

  Roxy nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve asked Mrs Dyce and she said that would be fine. She’s organising it now.’

  It was as if a pained expression came over his face. He drawled, ‘Is that what she told you, you’re going home?’

  He was shaking his head, and if Roxy had had any doubts they disappeared right then. He knew she couldn’t go home, ever. They would never let her.

  ‘You know what’s happening here, don’t you? You know they’re not going to let you go home.’

  Please, please, please, she was thinking, don’t let me faint. Though the spots were there in front of her eyes and her heart was thumping. Fainting was what she wanted to do. She blinked to try to make those spots disappear.

  ‘Yes, I am. I’m going home.’ Because if he thought she believed it, then he might just let her go.

  Stevens stepped closer and she shrank back from him.

  ‘I’m not going to be a part of it any more,’ he said.

  For a moment she thought she hadn’t heard him properly. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re just a kid. Too young. I told them that from the beginning. I won’t be a part of what they’re going to do to you.’

  ‘What they’re going to do to you.’ His words brought to Roxy’s mind the picture of herself, knife through the heart, and almost made her pass out.

  ‘I’m going to help you.’

  Was this really happening? Was the one she had been the most afraid of going to be the one who would be her saviour?

  ‘You’re going to help me … get away?’

  Now he looked afraid. ‘I’m a dead man if they find out I helped you.’

  That makes two of us, she almost said, but she stopped herself.

  ‘Please, please, please, help me.’ She touched his sleeve, still couldn’t bear to reach out to those fingers. ‘I don’t want them to take my baby. I don’t want him adopted, sold. I want to keep him.’

  He looked so puzzled she was taken aback. ‘Is that what you think they’re doing here? Is that what you think this set-up is all about? Adoption?’

  She couldn’t think what he meant. ‘They’re taking our babies and selling them … to the highest bidder. And then they’re telling the mothers that the babies have died.’

  What could possibly be worse than that?

  He shook his head, and his eyes grew black and heavy. ‘I thought you knew it all, but you don’t, do you? No, girl. What they’re doing here is much worse than that. What they’re doing here is pure evil.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Pure evil.

  Worse than selling the babies? But what could be worse than that? Roxy grabbed at Stevens’ sleeve.

  ‘What are they doing here?’

  He looked at her, as if he was considering an answer. His eyes were a cold watery blue. ‘It never bothered me till you came. Why should I care about all them others? But you’re too young. I told them that right from the beginning. Too young.’

  She tugged at his coat. ‘Too young for what?’

  But he was already shaking his head, his decision made. ‘Better you don’t know. Then you really would know too much.’ He was suddenly alert, as if he’d heard a noise in the distance, a crackle in the long, dry grass. ‘Come on,
I’m getting you out of here.’ He produced a heavy set of keys from his jacket pocket and he began fumbling with the chains round the gate, loosening them, unlatching them.

  Still Roxy had to know what he meant. The words ‘pure evil’ chanted in her mind.

  ‘You have to tell me what they’re doing here.’ She tried to make it sound like an order.

  He pulled his arm free of her. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It would scare you too much. It’s better you don’t know. Safer.’

  The gate at last creaked open. It opened so wide Roxy was almost sure it was about to topple over, but Stevens held it fast with one thick hand.

  ‘You get away, follow the old worn path. It leads to an old dirt track, but I can drive along there.’ She remembered it, she almost told him. ‘Wait for me when you get to the road. I’ll go for the jeep, come for you. Drop you somewhere. What you do then is your business. I’m not coming back here either. I’m out of this place, for ever.’

  He pushed her roughly through the gateway, anxious for her to be gone. ‘You’ve not got much time. When they realise you’ve gone they’ll be after you. You’ve been nothing but trouble to them since you came here. They both hate you, do you know that?’ She could have sworn his voice softened at this point, as if he was pleased she’d been that much trouble to them.

  ‘What are you helping me now for?’ Roxy couldn’t understand that. Here was this man, the one she had never trusted, with his dark, sleazy looks and his frightening fingers, now the one who was helping her to escape.

  ‘Because …’ He seemed to search for an answer. Then he said, ‘Maybe I’m just sick of what they’re doing here. Sick of myself for ever being a part of it.’

  She tried to ask him more, but he only pushed her away. He wouldn’t talk any more. He had said enough. She knew as much as she should want to know, he said. ‘Go,’ he kept saying. ‘There isn’t time for talk.’

  She heard him locking the gate behind her as she hurried through the long grass, heard him wrapping the chains round the iron railings once again. All the time, as she stumbled along the path, two words kept repeating in her mind.